Philadelphia Suspect: A Troubled Life

By MICHAEL deCOURCY HINDS,

Published: April 2, 1992

PHILADELPHIA, April 1—
Next to his picture in a 1960 high school yearbook is the prediction that Edward I. Savitz, its editor, would someday be Chief Justice of the United States.

"The Flame staff believes that its editor in chief will make it," they wrote 32 years ago in the yearbook of West Philadelphia High School.

But the Flame staff was wrong. Instead of continuing on the upward climb expected of the class valedictorian, yearbook editor and one of the most popular students in school, Mr. Savitz faltered. Law school fizzled, his graduate studies ended inconclusively, his marriage ended in divorce and he wound up working in his older brother's insurance business as an actuary.

Today Mr. Savitz is charged in the statutory rapes of four minor boys. Last Friday the Philadelphia District Attorney and the city's Health Commissioner issued an extraordinary public health warning about Mr. Savitz, who had been in police custody for two days on charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual abuse of children, indecent assault and corrupting the morals of a minor in connection with complaints by two males. AIDS Test Urged

The officials said that he had AIDS and that he had been infected with the virus that causes it for two years before he developed AIDS. During this time, the officials said, he may have had sex with several hundred teen-age boys, and they advised anyone who had contact with Mr. Savitz to seek advice about having an AIDS test.

It was in the 1970's, when Mr. Savitz was in his 30's and starting in the insurance business, that high school students in South Philadelphia began passing the word about a man they knew as "Uncle Ed," "Uncle Eddie" or "Fast Eddie." He lived in a downtown row house at the time, and paid high prices for dirty underwear and feces.

The police say they have evidence that Mr. Savitz has had contact with high school students and teen-age street hustlers since 1979. The evidence includes 5,000 photographs of boys or young men, some of them nude, and 312 plastic trash bags filled with soiled socks and underwear.

But since Friday, as public concern about AIDS swept the city, health officials have begun playing down the risk that Mr. Savitz may have passed on his infection. They said most of Mr. Savitz's activities appear to have involved oral sex and the acting out of fetishes. Both activities pose little or no risk of spreading AIDS, they said.

Mr. Savitz was released last week on $3 million bail, but later was re-arrested after two more minors came forward with similar allegations. Bail was set at $20 million, but Barnaby C. Wittels, Mr. Savitz's lawyer, has filed an appeal seeking to reduce the amount.

"Based on the information we have now, we're denying that he committed any crime," Mr. Wittels said today.

Mr. Savitz is a vice president of the Savitz Organization; his brother Samuel is chief executive officer of the company, which advises employers on retirement and health benefits. Some Details Emerge

Neither the company nor any member of the Savitz family would comment on the events that have surrounded Mr. Savitz since last week. But some details about his life have begun to emerge in news reports, principally in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Edward Isadore Savitz was born on Feb. 22, 1942, one of four sons, to Paul and Ann Gechman Savitz. The Savitzes were Russian immigrants who opened an amusement arcade in downtown Philadelphia. Mr. Savitz's parents are dead, and one of his brothers, Joseph, a lawyer who once served as a Deputy Attorney General in Pennsylvania, used barbiturates to commit suicide in 1981, according to the death certificate.

Mr. Savitz sailed through Philadelphia public schools. He was ranked first of 278 students in his high school class, and he was voted the most likely to succeed. He won a full scholarship to study economics at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1963.

In the same year he married Judith Widman, whom he had dated since high school and who become a lawyer, specializing in family law. The marriage ended in divorce a decade later. She refused to comment today.

Mr. Savitz enrolled in law school at the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out after two years. Then, in 1967, also after two years' study, he quit Temple University's graduate school of music.

Friends of Mr. Savitz said in interviews today that they are stunned and distraught over the news.

Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said he went to school with Mr. Savitz from grammar school through college.

"Eddie was really the wunderkind in school," Professor Coren said. "He was heading to be a successful lawyer or businessman, with a house in a Main Line suburb, a wife and three kids and a BMW in the driveway. End of story."

Photo: Edward I. Savitz, known to teen-age boys in Philadelphia as "Uncle Ed," being led from a police van yesterday to a court hearing. (Associated Press)

Correction: April 7, 1992, Tuesday Articles on March 28 and last Thursday about a man with AIDS who has told the authorities in Philadelphia that he paid for sex with a number of teen-agers over the last several years misstated the charges against him. The man, Edward I. Savitz, is being held on several charges involving four boys, including sexual abuse, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and promoting prostitution; he has not been charged with statutory rape.